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Writer's pictureEmerging Voices

Good News Comes For Eman

Updated: Aug 2

From We Are Not Numbers

Gaza Strip

January 14, 2024




Eman Dewari along with her husband Tayseer Abu Holy and her four children (from left to right) Mohab, Aser, Mohaymen, and Eliaa. The children were all under the age of 16. Photo provided by Basman Dewari.



They have thrown my heart into the fire. 

Now, they add another gallon

of gasoline. 

They killed Eman, my young sister. 

Leaving my mother’s heart 

suspended between earth and sky.

The good news is 

that she is no longer on earth. 

She no longer belongs 

to a world that buried her 

under the rubble of her house. 

Her killer did not allow 

any attempt to rescue her.


They let her spend the night 

cold, alone, tasting her own blood, 

away from her child 

she was trying to reach 

when her home fell 

all over her head.


The good news is 

she will meet my dad. 

I am sure she missed him a lot. 

She will live in a space 

where sounds can’t hurt anymore. 

She will spend time again 

with her family without seeing the shadow 

of their death reflected on the curtains 

in a dark room illuminated 

by the flashing of missiles.


The bad news is she will miss her mother and siblings. 

Maybe she will miss one amputated dream.


Yet the good news is 

she is not going to miss 

any of her children. 

They killed them all together.


 


Editor’s note: Eman Derawi was killed with her family by Israel on Jan. 4, 2024. Basman Derawi has also commemorated in poems his good friends Essa Essa, killed on Nov. 22, 2023, and Oudah Al Haw, killed on Jan. 3, 2024.


Mentor Kevin Hadduck,

Helena, Montana, USA

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